I’ve said a few times that one of the more obvious double-standard of many neo-cons is how they like to apply different standards to people. So for example, free speech and civil liberties are very important for Muslims to understand and respect (because they’re unenlightened innit?) but when it comes to protecting the rights of Muslim hate-mongers to say what they want, then suddenly they start accusing others of ‘enabling terrorism’ or something.

They’re all for human rights and stuff, but not when Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch are criticising Israel or the US. Why can’t they just focus on the Muslims? They’re worse! — they squeal.

The stuff that recent Russian spies managed to filch won’t have been 1,000th as damaging to security as the Wikileaks material. Big moment.

Tim Montgomerie, who’s more of a neocon than Liam Fox himself, agrees.

Hmmm… I wonder what they’re trying to get at? How long before Wikileaks is declared a threat to our national security and ‘an enabler’ of Islamists? How long before they start trying to find bias against western governments at Wikileaks and demand it be shut down? Not very long at all.

[...] criticise Sunny Hundal, arch-enemy of The Decents. In yesterday’s Pickled Politics blog Sunny criticised the Decent Left for its hypocrisy over approaches to free speech, human rights and so forth. I [...]

“They’re all for human rights and stuff, but not when Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch are criticising Israel or the US. Why can’t they just focus on the Muslims? They’re worse! — they squeal.”

OK let’s have some examples of *them* squealing “Why can’t they just focus on the Muslims? They’re worse” when Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch are criticising Israel or the US.

As others have said, it is not clear that the leaks change the bigger picture.

If the leaks were revealing advance military operations, that woul be wrong. But more highlighting of civilian deaths? Good. If this reduces support for the war, then the answer is to stop killing so many civilians, not stopping the news coming out.

The leaks also continue to highlight the brutality of the Taliban/ISI.

I wouldn’t pay too much attention to the anti ISI stuff. Yeah the ISI is probably involved in ensuring Indians are not allowed to influence in Afghanistan and that the pukhtun resistance forces are not defeated, however to suggest Hamid Gul is driving trucks of bombs to Afghanistan himself is somewhat ludicrous.

Yes the ISI is hacking at the legs of NATO forces, but they’re far too intelligent to get caught.

Of course the ISI was involved in the setup of the Taliban. They practically controlled it mid 90′s. But listing a couple of facts and then listing a load of theories/rumours isn’t a credible4 way of making an arguement.

your list is the same as saing;

– Oranges are a a fruit
– The Earth is round
– God and Angels exist
– Fairies exist
– Dragons used to exist

A lot of us think god exists, we can’t ask him to appear on TV to prove it. We may think dragons existed, but we can’t prove it.

A lot of people may implicate the ISI for a lot of things but none of them can prove it. Even if they did, there isn’t a lot they can do about it.

For all the uproar and bluster and hot air of the world, the Pakistani state traded in nuclear weapons to make money and fund military programmes and when caught, blamed a single man, pardoned him on national TV and then refused to let anyone in the entire world ever get close to him again. What consequences have they faced? None. If we were a non nuclear armed state, do you think it would have been the same case?

People don’t go toe-to-toe with nuclear states, it’s not a wise idea. That’s why Pakistan and India will probably never go to war again, yet will probably for generations to come, but at a state of war.

The cold war was fought with proxies, Russia and America fought for power and against each other using states, groups as proxies. The Chinese army fought as N.Koreans and as Vietnamese. Soviet pilots flew N.Korean Mig’s. The CIA tried to assassinate Castro many times. They did assassinate Zia Ul Haq.

Today the USA invaded Iraq, destroyed it and is stealing it’s oil, under the fake guise of a WMD. Mercenary blackwater operatives are working in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan running torture camps, kidnapping and assassinating.

When the mighty still use dirty tactics, do you think that Pakistan won’t? Pakistan cannot survive with India or America controlling Afghanistan. Pakistan needs to be in control of Afghanistan. The same way Pakistan’s ISI wages war in India, India’s RAW wages war in Pakistan, the only difference is, India wants to pretend to be innocent.

Pakistan can’t stop India having an influence in Afghanistan, there is too much money involved. Pakistan however can however back a horse in Afghanistan who when they will, won’t allow anyone influence in Afghanistan.

I think long term it’s potentially disastrous, but Pakistan is between a rock and a hard place. You can either be surrounded by India and Indian influence, or you can fight the dirty fight.

An intelligence agency often goes rogue or has individuals who have gone rogue or does things with approval from a government.

However, in Pakistan, the army-intelligence nexus is far more powerful than any other institution in the country. While RAW may be undertaking subversive activities – and they must be really bad at what they do – but they are answerable and do answer to elected civilians.

The problem for Pakistan is this ISI- ARMY nexus is bigger than anything and is hurting Pakistan big time.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I have read/heard that allegation (USA is stealing Iraqs oil) but have never seen any irrefutable evidence to back it up – Is today going to be a first? Or is such evidence as nonexistent as Iraqs WMD?

While you are at it can you also give me some idea of the total amount of free oil that has found its way to America and the quantity of oil the US Government would have to steal to turn a profit from *this* war?

On the other hand you could follow Sunny’s example when he can’t come up with answers to reasonable questions and simply accuse me of being a troll.

Shamit, Kargil was a limited war that nearly turned nuclear. The pattern wasn’t repeated in 2002 after the attack on the Indian parliament or after the Mumbai attacks in 2008 despite movement of forces onto borders, simply because, of the lessons learnt from Kargil. Limited warfare can only work if one side decides not to fight back, like Russia in Georgia.

I don’t think the current policy Pakistan is using in Afghanistan will lead to peace in Pakistan or Afghanistan. I think in the long term it will be a threat to Pakistan, but the dialogue between India and Pakistan on Kashmir is not mature enough to allow either side to not fight a proxy war against each other.

No government in Islamabad or Delhi cares about several million people in some mountains, the real concern is the water supplies being in the hand of the “dushman”.

As others have said, it is not clear that the leaks change the bigger picture.If the leaks were revealing advance military operations, that woul be wrong. But more highlighting of civilian deaths? Good. If this reduces support for the war, then the answer is to stop killing so many civilians, not stopping the news coming out.

As ever, Rumbold is the voice of reason and rationality on this blog.

The comment box here is reaching HP levels of hysteria and bigotry – fed by some of the above the line Blogging… ” Why can’t they just focus on the Muslims? They’re worse! — they squeal.” – irresponsible stuff…

The leaks also continue to highlight the brutality of the Taliban/ISI.

But this isn’t getting the same airplay is it? It’s not “the Story” …

This is why Sunny’s post is so irresponsible. The only person trying to cover up the oppression of muslims is Sunny hinmself.

wikileaks reports just confirms most observers suspicions that huge numbers of civillians are being killed by nato forces. The killings are being covered up in army gibberish code. The plan for afghanistan is a failed one and these war logs just adds more pressure for nato to leave afghanistan.

I think DF above must barely read the newspapers if they can’t see any evidence of the allies “stealing” Iraq’s oil – Firstly, the very large Development Fund For Iraq, made up of Iraqi oil receipts, was handed over to the Coalition Provisional Authority, who then handed it to mostly US multinationals to “reconstruct” Iraq: So Iraqi oil money was handed over to companies from the allied nations – who in turn failed to get Iraq’s water clean or the electricity on, but did spirit away millions of dollars in often grotesquely corrupt deals.

Secondly, the new government(s) of Iraq, notably more co operative than the previous one, is/are handing over “service contracts” to a series of western oil firms. So oil money and oil production that was formerly in the hands of an uncooperative dictator is now , at least partly, in the hands of companies based in the invading nations. Not exactly secret stuff , this.

I normally support what Wikileaks do but in this case they have messed up big time. It’s all well and good publishing military reports that show the bigger picture of the war but not at the expense of some of the locals.

So far nobody who has posted here seems to care overly much about the fate of the Afghans named in the reports.

Still, why care about a few far off foreigners who might be tortured and killed because wikileaks was too lazy/irresponsible to go through the material it leaked properly.

Just so long as we can score points about the wrongness of this war then they’re clearly an acceptable sacrifice.